Blogs Will Change Your Business

Stephen Baker and Heather Green
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_18/b3931001_mz001.htm

Another important part of the Web 2.0 world is blogging. Most people cringe at the sound of the word but even more read, create, and edit millions of blogs every day. People blog about every thing. Right now, I'm blogging about blogging. It's very easy to understand that blogs are here to stay and as this article explains, they can be an essential part to any business.

General Motors may not be having the greatest luck with the economy but they have embraced the blogging for business concept. Vice-chairman Bob Lutz heads a large part of GM's blogging and has received much praise from the public because of his balanced responses.

Though blogging can help and even change your business for the better, there are, like every thing else in the world, consequences. Blogs, unless opted to be private, can be viewed by anyone on the internet at any time. Be careful what you post.

Take programmer Mark Jen for example. Jen, an employee of Google, blogged about the company's health care and "free food." It wasn't anything serious at all, but Google fired him because of it. Jen now works for Plaxo, helping coordinate their blogs.

Along with helping business reach their customers on a more personal level and adding another way to advertise, blogs have become so popular they are even creating more jobs. Thousands of people like Jen are now being hired to create, manage, post, and edit company's blogs.

Whether you read and post everyday or are like myself and can't even stand to write a 300 word blog once a week, you must embrace the concept. Many of the millions of blogs on the internet are pointless, stream of consciousness personal blogs that have no significance to anything. Yet, there are plenty that are very useful and businesses have realized the potential they have.